Update, March 24, 2019: Lamb was up for re-election with the newly redrawn state of Pennsylvania electoral map in 2018. He ran in the 17th District, against fellow incumbent Republican Keith Loftus. Lamb defeated him with 56.3 percent of the vote to Loftus’s 43.7 percent.

Lamb is due up again in 2020. Please consider him for your next Core Four.

This OTYCD entry originally posted in January 2018.

Update March 24, 2018: This was a nail-biter. Lamb had a slight but clear lead of 627 votes by the end of the night on March 13, 2018–a margin that was smaller than half a percentage point, and smaller than the number of votes cast for the Libertarian candidate. A recount begun on Friday, March 16 increased Lamb’s lead slightly, nudging it past 800 votes.

Republican opponent Rick Saccone called Lamb to concede the election on March 21. Lamb will lead Pennsylvania’s 18th District until November, when new electoral maps, designed to combat the effects of pro-Republican gerrymandering, go into effect. Lamb will run in the 17th District, and Saccone will run in the 14th District.

Read a Washington Post story about the conclusion of the Pennsylvania special election:

Support Democrat Conor Lamb’s run for the open house seat in Pennsylvania’s 18th district. The special election takes place on March 13, 2018.

Lamb, 33, is a former federal prosecutor who did notable work tackling the opioid crisis in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is also a veteran of the Marine corps, where he rose to the rank of captain. He comes from a political family; his grandfather and his uncle prominently served in high-profile state posts.

Lamb is facing Republican state rep Rick Saccone, who likes to say that he “was Trump before Trump was Trump.” Lamb has never held elected office, and PA-18 has a strong Republican reputation. Given the overperformances by Democrats in special elections and state and local elections since Trump was elected, the Democrats believe that Lamb has a decent shot at the House seat.

Republican Tim Murphy vacated the seat in October 2017 after news broke that the pro-life Congressman had evidently urged a pregnant mistress to abort. He had held the Congressional seat since 2003.

Update, March 24, 2018: Houlahan won the Pennsylvania 6th District seat on November 6, 2018, defeating Republican Greg McCauley with 58.9 percent of the vote to his 41.1 percent of the vote. Please consider her for your 2020 Core Four.

Update, May 26, 2018: Houlahan ran unopposed in the May 15 primary and will meet Republican Greg McCauley in the general election on November 6.

Support Chrissy Houlahan, a Democratic candidate for a house seat in Pennsylvania’s 6th District in 2018.

Houlahan is an Air Force veteran who earned her Stanford engineering degree by participating in ROTC. She later earned an M.S. in technology and policy from MIT. She’s been a COO for businesses as well as a nonprofit. She taught chemistry in Philadelphia. She’s the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and a naval officer, and the mother of two grown children. She was moved to run by the outcome of the November 2016 presidential election.

She believes health care, public safety, and public education are all basic rights, and she would legislate accordingly. She wants campaign finance reform. She’d fight climate change and attacks on scientific facts as well.

Houlahan is endorsed by 314 Action, a nonprofit that is devoted to promoting a pro-science agenda on all levels of government, and electing more candidates with STEM backgrounds to office. She’s also endorsed by Emily’s List, VoteVets.org, and End Citizens United, among others. She is committed to defending Planned Parenthood and would resist attempts to undermine Roe v Wade. She supports getting veterans what they need to transition to civilian life and treat their injuries.

The Democratic primary takes place on May 15, 2018. Two other Democrats are running against her. If Houlahan wins the primary, she would face Republican Ryan Costello, who is in his second term as a house rep.

UpdateMarch 25, 2018: Costello announced that he would retire from Congress. The candidate filing deadline passed on March 20, so it looks like Houlahan will face Republican Greg McCauley. The two other Democrats have since dropped out, so Houlahan will be the sole candidate on the primary ballot in May.

In 2016, Ballotpedia considered Pennsylvania’s 6th district race safely Republican. Costello won 57.2 percent of the vote to his Democratic challenger’s 42.8 percent.

Heller screwed up big-time when he succumbed to pressure to vote in favor of Trumpcare 2.0. He is feeling the heat, as he should. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to stop him from signing on to cosponsor Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham’s Trumpcare 3.0 bill.

Even before his Trumpcare 2.0 vote, polls had Heller losing to a generic Democrat, 39 percent to 46 percent. Nevada also went for Clinton during the 2016 election, enhancing the view that Heller is vulnerable. In the wake of Trumpcare 2.0, he is more vulnerable still.

Rosen has stepped up on the Democratic side to challenge him. Please check out her site and think about what you can do to help her. Note also that Rosen is supported by our friends at 314 Action, the organization that boosts candidates who have STEM backgrounds. She worked as a computer programmer and a software developer.

Note: Sarah Jane, lead editor on OTYCD, has since chosen Rosen for her Core Four.

Support No NRA Money, an organization that aims to make the National Rifle Association (NRA) radioactive in American culture.

If you’re reading this blog, you are beyond sick of Republican resistance to passing laws that will actually do something to curtail mass shootings. The NRA has done the most to aggressively smear, cloud over, and distract from what we all know is true–the root cause of mass shootings is guns, and how easy it is to get guns.

Every other country in the world has sick, entitled, anger-prone people. Most countries have access to the same video games, movies, books, music, and pop culture that Americans do. All countries have less-than-ideal parents among their citizens. But other countries don’t have anywhere near the number of mass shootings we do, and the only thing they have that we don’t is common-sense gun laws that work.

Fed up with the deadly stranglehold that the NRA has on American federal and state legislatures, No NRA Money is doing its damnedest to change the culture.

Just as Mothers Against Drunk Driving forced a cultural change that made drunk driving taboo rather than a small error, No NRA Money is pursuing a cultural change of its own–one that would make the NRA persona non grata.

It encourages candidates for office to pledge to refuse campaign donations from the NRA., and it encourages voters to pledge to vote against any candidate that accepts NRA money. As of late May 2018, more than 200 politicians and candidates for office had signed the No NRA Money pledge.

Its website also points visitors to a February 2018 Washington Post article that reveals which Congresspeople have accepted money from the NRA:

Cisneros faces re-election in 2020. Please consider him for your next Core Four.

Original text of the post follows.

Support Democrat Gil Cisneros, who’s running for the House of Representatives seat in California’s 39th District that Republican Ed Royce is leaving.

To flip the House of Representatives to Democratic control, the party needs to win at least 24 seats in the fall elections that are currently Republican.

California offers many opportunities for Democratic pickups–at least eight. The 39th District is one of them. Ed Royce, a particularly noxious Republican who held the Orange County seat for the last 26 years has announced he would retire.

Cisneros came second in a very crowded June 5 primary. California uses a top-two system where the two candidates who get the most votes advance to the general, no matter what party they’re from. He beat 15 other candidates to earn the right to compete.

The only person who got more votes than him, the Royce-endorsed Young Kim, drew almost 22 percent of the vote to Cisneros’s 19.3 percent.

The California 39th seat is gettable. The Cook Political Report rates it as a Toss-up.

Read a July 2017 Los Angeles Times piece about Cisneros’s entry into the race, in which he mentions that he left the Republican Party in 2008 because he didn’t like the direction in which the party was going:

As a member of the House, Rouda will be up for re-election in 2020. Please consider including him in your 2020 Core Four.

Original text of the 2018 post on Rouda’s campaign follows.

Support Democrat Harley Rouda’s campaign to win the House of Representatives seat in California’s 48th Congressional District and unseat Republican Dana Rohrabacher.

It was inevitable that the 2018 race in California’s 48th would command attention. Republican incumbent Dana Rohrabacher has held the seat since 1988 (that’s not a typo, you read that right, he’s been there almost 30 years) and he is widely seen as being in the pocket of Vladimir Putin and Russia.

This goes beyond an affinity for blinis and borscht.

In 2012, the FBI warned Rohrabacher that the Kremlin regards him as being so Russia-friendly that they gave him a code name:

In October 2017, news broke that House Republican leaders restricted his ability to use Congressional funds on travel because of his closeness to Russia:

A June 2016 recording, which was subsequently heard and confirmed by Washington Post reporters, captured House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy stating, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” House Speaker Paul Ryan reportedly stopped the conversation and swore everyone listening to secrecy.

The Cook Political Report shows the trouble the Republican incumbent is in. It rates his seat as a Toss-up.

Democrats need to gain at least 24 seats in the House of Representatives to take control of the chamber. Those who know say that eight of those 24 could flip in California. The 48th is one of those eight.

After a ferociously fought June 5, 2018 top-two primary that included eight Democrats among 15 challengers for Rohrabacher’s seat, Harley Rouda took second place by 126 votes. (Thanks again for your efforts, Hans Keirstead.)

This seat is eminently gettable, and Rouda is raring to get it. Please look at the links below and see if you can support him. Rouda promises to be tougher on Russia than Rohrabacher is, but to be fair, it’s mathematically impossible not to be tougher on Russia than Rohrabacher is.

She’s demonstrated great sense and level-headedness by aiming for a local-regional office. She wants to serve as the Algonkian District Supervisor in Loudon County, Virginia. The election is in November 2019.

If you live in Loudon County, this is a perfect fit for your 2019 To-Do List. If you don’t live there, there’s nothing stopping you from donating to Briskman and spreading the word about her campaign.